Members of the Ellijay- Gilmer County Water and Sewerage Authority approved a couple of expenses for pending repair projects at the water and wastewater treatment plants when meeting last week.
One expense was for an overhaul of a worn influent pump at the wastewater treatment plant. Gary McVey, water authority director, said it was hoped that the pump, which receives raw sewage, would only need a simple rebuild, which usually costs $12,000-$14,000. After closer inspection by the repair company, it was determined that a compete overhaul of the pump is needed.
“We (also) had the #1 pump go down, so there’s only three out of the five (pumps) operating right now. That makes me a little nervous,” McVey said.
Board members Billy Rowe, Tony Whitaker, David Westmoreland, Hubert Parker and Ricky Wimpey approved an expense not to exceed $32,641 for multiple parts needed for the repairs. McVey said it will save time and money if the water authority purchases the needed parts and has the same repair company, which already has the pump, install them.
Due to an extended wait time on parts, it will likely be until after the current budget year when the repairs can be completed, McVey noted.
“The lead time on parts is killing us,” he added. “We’re getting to the point to where, in the near future, we probably need to look at doing something different with the influent pumps. They have worked well, and we’ve had to rebuild them, but they’re handling some rough stuff. I think it’s time for us to start looking at updating a little bit.”
Board members also approved an expense for installing new aluminum handrailing around the basins of the water treatment plant.
“We would’ve liked to have gotten this done earlier in the budget year. We’ve had a devil of a time having anybody to quote this, but we did get two quotes,” said McVey.
The handrail contract was awarded to Tri-Tech Fabricators for a cost not to exceed $70,000.
In other news ...
﹣ Installation of new water line from South Main Street to River Street is nearing completion, McVey told board members in his project updates. As of Monday, March 25, the contracted crew was days away from reaching a tie-in point to existing water line on River Street, he added.
“There’s still a lot of disinfection testing, and they have to tie the services over. This (has been) a difficult job,” McVey said. “There’s (also) still 300 feet of piping on West Spring Street. They’ll probably finish everything else and get everything online, then do that last portion behind the courthouse.”
McVey said a crew was expected to soon start looking at concreting the cuts made in South Main Street during the line installation. It looked like that work was already underway as of Monday.
The water authority was recently approved for an extension on using a half-million dollar OneGeorgia grant from the state Department of Community Affairs to fund the project, McVey noted.
“That puts the (project) end date at July 20. Hopefully, they’ll be done quite a bit before then, (but) you never know what you’re going to run into,” he added.
﹣ A systemwide conversion from manually-read to digitally-read water meters is finally complete, McVey noted. The remaining 403 digital meters were installed over the past month.
“The AMI system is now complete and in service. It’s working really good, and we’re very happy with it,” McVey said.